Monday, August 21, 2023

Justice for Swapnadeep pl

 Justice for Swapnadeep


কতবার যাদবপুর বিশ্ব বিদ্যালয় এর পাশ দিয়ে হেঁটে গেছি, একে একে Gate গুলো cross করার সময় দু একবার মুখ তুলে তাকিয়ে দেখেছি Engineering department building. তারপর আবার চলতে চলতে শেষ গেট টার কাছে এসে 8B bus stand। অনবরত students আসছে যাচ্ছে। যেমন ভগবান্ অদৃশ্য থেকে ভবিষৎ লেখেন তেমনটাই মনে হতো Gate এর দিকে দৃষ্টি পাত করলে। এই বুঝি ডাকবে। আবার অনেক পৃষ্ঠা পড়তে ও লিখতে হবে, যার কোনো শেষ নেই, অসীম ও অনন্ত। Graduation পড়ার tuitions নেওয়ার ক্লাস attend kortam Jadavpur e Sir er কাছে। আজ স্বপ্নদীপ এর স্বপ্ন ভঙ্গ হওয়ার দুঃসহ যন্ত্রনার সাক্ষী হয়ে রইলো Jadavpur University Campus. Twenty years since nothing has changed, ragging continues in the JU campus like in any other college and University premises. University students rule the roost and threaten the juniors especially those who come from districts. 

Swapnadeep was seventeen year old Bengali Honours student who hailed from Bogula, in the district of Nadia. 

On the dreadful night of August 9, the Honours student was ragged and thrown out of the balcony by a group of hooligans who live inside the campus as students. Getting a seat in the JU is a chance which many dream. But only a few become successful.



Tuesday, June 18, 2019


CYCLONE FANI HAS CAUSED EXTENSIVE DAMAGE
The state needs help to return to normalcy

AFTER AILA, KATRINA, HUDHUD IN ANDHRA PRADESH, NOW IT'S FANI, THE DEADLY CYCLONE THAT HIT ODISHA LEAVING A DISASTER TRAIL AND LASHED BANGLADESH SOON AFTER. THE MEDIA SOUNDED EXTRA ALERT WITH THE SOCIAL MEDIA FLASHING NEWS ALERTS TO HELP PEOPLE WHO HAD CROSSED THE DANGER LINE NEAR THE BAY OF BENGAL. PURI, A TOURIST HOTSPOT, WAS WORST AFFECTED BESIDES BARIPADA, KENDRAPADA AND BALASORE. DISTRICTS OF WEST BENGAL -- MIDNAPUR AND BANKURA ALSO BORE THE BRUNT OF THE GUSTY AND MIGHTY STORM. THE CITY OF KOLKATA REMAINED CLOUDY AND FELT THE TREMOR. WHILE WE REMAINED CONNECTED, PEOPLE OF ORISSA/ODISHA REMAINED DISCONNECTED SINCE WIRED AND COMMUNICATIONS WERE DISRUPTED. FLIGHTS WERE CANCELLED FOR SAFETY REASONS. PEOPLE PANICKED. EVEN THE SIGHTS AND THE SOUNDS OF THE STORM WERE FRUSTRATING AND UNBEARABLE TO WATCH ON TV.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Invention of bus in London


A brief history of bus service in London

In England the first bus service which was launched in 1662 was more like horse carriages and was invented by French mathematician Blaise Pascal. Decades after this invention took place, prototypical British gentleman scientist and inventor Sir Goldsworthy Gurney designed the steam-powered bus in 1830. Blaise Pascal named his public bus service in Paris ‘carriages’ but those buses ceased to operate after 15 years and they did not appear again until horse-powered multi-person carriages emerged in Paris again in about 1819 or 1820. "Omnibus" is a Latin word meaning "for all." They were more like modern-day buses custom made for passengers’ comfort, to transport multiple people along a route and allow them to board or debark at locations along the route without the necessity of having stations.




The first regular bus route appears to have started from Manchester to Liverpool, beginning in 1824. Ten years later steam-powered buses came into service in England. The Siemens brothers in 1882 invented the electric trolleycar which did not go into service carrying passengers until 1901 in Germany, and 1911 in England.
In 1827, George Shillibeer introduced the first school bus for Quaker school at Abney Park in Stoke Newington in the North-East of the United Kingdom. It was horse-drawn and designed to carry twenty-five children. 

Buses have been used on the streets of London since 1829, when George Shillibeer started operating his horse drawn omnibus service from Paddington to the city. In 1850 Thomas Tilling started horse bus services, and in 1855 the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) was founded to amalgamate and regulate the horse-drawn omnibus services then operating in London. LGOC began using motor omnibuses in 1902, and manufactured them itself from 1909. In 1904 Thomas Tilling started its first motor bus service. The last LGOC horse-drawn bus ran on 25 October 1911, although independent operators used them until 1914.
In 1909 Thomas Tilling and LGOC entered into an agreement to pool their resources. The agreement restricted the expansion of Thomas Tilling in London, and allowed the LGOC to lead an amalgamation of most of London's bus services. However, also in 1909 Thomas Clarkson started the National Steam Car Company to run steam buses in London in competition with the LGOC. In 1919 the National company reached agreement with the LGOC to withdraw from bus operation in London, and steam bus services ceased later that year

The first double-decker bus was invented in Paris in 1853; it was a horse-drawn omnibus. The upper floor was cheaper and often uncovered. The first double-decker motor bus in Paris, Schneider Brillié P2, appeared in 1906. It was designed to allow more passengers and to replace the horse-drawn double-decker omnibus.


In 1912 the Underground Group, which at that time owned most of the London Underground,  bought the LGOC. In 1933 the LGOC, along with the rest of the Underground Group, became part of the new London Passenger Transport Board. The name London General was replaced by London Transport, which became synonymous with the red London bus.
Bus numbers were first used in 1906. When the independent firms started in 1922, they used General route numbers, along with suffixes from the alphabet to denote branch routes. In 1924, under the London Traffic Act, the Metropolitan Police was given the authority of allocating route numbers, which all buses had to carry. This ultimately led to chaos and in the London Passenger Transport Act of 1933 the powers of allocating route numbers was taken away from the police and handed once again to professional busmen. Suffixes were gradually abolished over the decades, the last such route in London being the 77A, which became the 87 in June 2006.
The LPTB, under Lord Ashfield  donned responsibility for all bus services in the London Passenger Transport Area, an area with a radius of about 30 miles of central London. This included the London General country buses (later to be London Transport's green buses), Green Line Coaches and the services of several Tilling Group and independent companies.
London buses continued to operate under the London Transport name from 1933 to 2000, although the political management of transport services changed several times. The LPTB oversaw transport from 1933 to 1947 until it was re-organised into the London Transport Executive (1948 to 1962). Responsibility for London Transport was subsequently taken over to the London Transport Board (1963 to 1969), the Greater London Council (1970 to 1984) and London Regional Transport (1984 to 2000).
However, in 1969 legislation was passed to transfer the green country services, outside the area of the Greater London Council, to the recently formed National Bus Company. Trading under the name London Country the green buses and Green Line Coaches became the responsibility of a new NBC subsidiary, London Country Bus Services on 1 January 1970.
A former network of express buses operated by London Transport in central London was the Red Arrows. The routes, all numbered in the 500s, ran from main line stations to various locations in the West End and City. They were introduced in 1966 and expanded in 1968, but in the 1990s they were gradually phased out and only two former routes, 507 and 508, continued.
In 1979 the operation of London's buses under the GLC was divided among eight areas or districts. 

(Compiled)

Friday, March 03, 2017

Dhananjay Chatterjee's Execution



Criminal Justice

Dhananjay Chatterjee was a guard in a building where a teen-aged girl named Hetal Parekh was found dead in March 1990. He was convicted of having raped and killed her and was hanged on his 39th birthday, August 14, 2004, protesting his innocence until the end. His execution followed a shrill campaign waged by the wife of the then West Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. Chatterjee’s appeals were rejected by the then president APJ Abdul Kalam on the advice of arguably India’s worst home minister, Shivraj Patil, going by historian Ramachandra Guha’s estimation. In a similar situation, his predecessor in Rashtrapati Bhavan, KR Narayanan, had applied his mind wonderfully, as emerges from an anecdote narrated by his secretary, Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Delivering the People’s Union of Civil Liberties’ 35th JP Memorial Lecture in Bangalore on March 23 in 2015 earlier this year, Gandhi described how he had received a call late at night from Chennai regarding the case of a man on death row in Tamil Nadu and how the president had unhesitatingly decided on commuting his sentence. Gandhi went on to speak of the independent and cerebral outlook that India’s sole Dalit president brought to his job. As for Dhananjay Chatterjee’s execution, the People’s Union for Democratic Rights, a four-decades-old New Delhi-based volunteer outfit, put out a statement on July 21, 2015 based on an analysis by two scholars from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, arguing that the guard was framed.
The analysis by Debashish Sengupta and Prabal Chaudhury, timed to coincide with the Law Commission’s Public Hearing on the death penalty in New Delhi on Saturday, July 11, described what they believe was a botched investigation. They also highlighted inconsistencies in the evidence and pointed to fictitious claims, all aimed, they say, to frame Chatterjee. The two scholars noted that a police witness in court denied having seen Chatterjee at the victim’s flat. The police seizure list was signed by someone who supplied tea to the police and did not turn up in court. The antecedents of some items presented as incriminating evidence, such as a necklace and a watch, were never checked. The trial court failed to question why no murder weapon was recovered and why there was no blood on Chatterjee’s clothes even though there were 21 stab wounds on the victim’s body. While the crime was said to have been committed in a short window between 5:20 pm and 5:50 pm, when Hetal Parekh’s mother was out of the flat, there was a three-hour delay before the police were called – ample time for tampering with the evidence. The Parekh family members’ statements were inconsistent, and the family soon wrapped up its thriving jewellery business and left Kolkata, raising the possibility of an honour killing, the scholars contend. A letter written by the victim’s father alleging that Chatterjee used to harass his daughter, which was used by the police to establish a motive, seems to have been written after the crime, the scholars say. Chatterjee had spent 14 years in jail before he was hanged. He was thus punished twice for a crime he likely did not commit, going by the Kolkata scholars’ analysis, for the mere fault of being too poor to engage a competent lawyer.

Dhananjay admits to murder, but not rape

Dhananjay Chatterjee's diary should make interesting reading. For one, it is an attempt to get under the skin of crime by a criminal waiting to be hanged. And, two, it insists that he did not rape Hetal Parekh after she came back home from a history examination. Murder, yes, but rape, no way. This January, when the government had pulled itself up to settle the case once and for all, that a jail official asked him to maintain a diary. A pencil and some note-pads were given to him but Chatterjee waited for June to really immerse himself in the diarist's job.
The product might just surprise everyone, feels prisons officials who are keeping a close tab on Chatterjee. The diary had the usual autobiographical inputs but, somewhere down the line, changed its tone. Somebody told Dhananjoy that he must analyse the reasons behind the gory murders taking place daily. "Why should you limit yourself to your life?" the officials supposedly suggested.
Chatterjee agreed. He was always an avid reader of newspapers and kept a watch on the the things around him. "This was how it started," a prisons department official added. Officials still do not know Chatterjee's analysis of crime and criminals but say that Dhananjay is insisting, even in his "autobiographical" diary, that he did not rape Hetal Parekh.
Little that they have been allowed into some of the pages, they believe that Chatterjee is only admitting to the murder. Chatterjee has also turned "religious" with a vengeance, say officials. Always "apparently god-fearing", he is now an avid reader of the Gita, a copy of which was given to him as the country was debating whether he should be hanged for what he did 14 years ago.

 President Kalam rejects Dhananjay's mercy petition

August 04, 2004 17:15 IST
President A P J Abdul Kalam on Wednesday rejected the mercy petition of Dhananjoy Chatterjee.The President decided to reject the petition after he had discussions with legal experts, including Attorney General Milon Banerji. A West Bengal trial court had sentenced him to death, which was confirmed by the high court and the Supreme Court, for raping and murdering 14-year-old school girl Hetal Parekh in 1990. Sources in Rashtrapati Bhawan told rediff.com that the President signed the rejection of the mercy petition late last night. The petition was moved by Dhananjay's wife and brother two and a half months ago. The mercy petition was sent by the home ministry for the President's consideration about a month back. This was Dhananjoy's second mercy petition before the President. His first one was rejected on June 23, 1994. The execution order was confirmed by a division bench of the Calcutta high court comprising Justice M K Mukherjee and Justice J N Hore on August 7, 1992. The convict moved the Supreme Court and his appeal was dismissed by a division bench comprising Justice A S Anand and Justice N P Singh on January 11, 1994. His review petition before the apex court was also rejected on January 20, 1994. He then moved a mercy petition before the West Bengal Governor on February 2, 1994, which was rejected on February 16 the same year.
Following this, he had moved a mercy petition before the President, on February 17, 1994, which was rejected on June 23 the same year. Since his death sentence in 1992 by the sessions court for the gruesome act, Dhananjoy has successfully used loopholes in the legal procedures to escape the gallows for over a decade. Chatterjee had once before escaped the noose by a whisker in 1994, when he got a stay on his execution from the Calcutta high court and the Supreme Court.
He had moved the high court a day before February 25, 1994, the date fixed for his execution and obtained a stay from the court on the ground that he had moved a mercy petition before the President on February 17. On the same day (February 24) his wife Purnima had moved the apex court seeking a stay on execution on the ground that she be allowed time to move a mercy petition before the President.  The apex court granted the stay for a week till March 4 and a communique was received by the West Bengal Judicial Department the same evening about the stay, just hours before the scheduled execution at 4.30 a.m the next morning. He managed two more extensions on the stay by the high court and then an unlimited stay till disposal of his petition by the President, suppressing the fact that his wife had also obtained a stay on his execution from the apex court giving the same reason, public prosecutor for state before the high court, Kaji Safiullah.
While the mercy petition was rejected by the President on June 23, 1994, the state government did not take any step to vacate the stay by the high court, till it came to the notice of a Judicial Department officer in October 2003.
Once the high court was informed of the situation by the judicial department, the then Chief Justice A K Mathur assigned the matter to Justice D P Sengupta and the stay was vacated in November last.
An appeal against this order by Dhananjoy was also rejected by a division bench of the High Court a month later.
Dhananjoy had been convicted on three counts-- Section 302 (murder) IPC for which the execution order was given, Section 376 (rape) IPC for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment and Section 380 (theft inside house) IPC, for  which he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment.
Dhananjoy was sentenced to death on August 12, 1991, by the Second Additional Session Judge, Alipur, R N Kali.
The execution order was confirmed by a division bench of the Calcutta high court comprising Justice M K Mukherjee and Justice J N Hore on August 7, 1992.
The convict moved the Supreme Court and his appeal was dismissed by a division bench comprising Justice A S Anand  and Justice N P Singh on January 11, 1994.
His review petition before the apex court was also rejected on January 20, 1994.
He then moved a mercy petition before the West Bengal Governor on February two, 1994, which was rejected on February 16 the same year.
Following this, he had moved a mercy petition before the President, on February 17, 1994, which was rejected on June 23 the same year.
Meanwhile, the West Bengal government said it was yet to receive any formal communication from the Union law ministry about initiating the process of execution of Dhananjay Chatterjee.
"We have heard about it, but no formal communication has been received from the Centre yet," official sources said in Kolkata.
Neither the Chief Secretary nor the Home Secretary of the state were available for comment. The office of the State Advocate General said it would take some time for the secretariat of the AG to receive a formal communication in this regard.
With inputs from Press Trust of India
WITH President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam rejecting the mercy petition, the noose will tighten around the neck of Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who has been awaiting the execution of the death penalty for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Hetal Parekh on March 15, 1990. This was the second mercy petition of the convict to the President. He has been lodged in the Alipore Central jail in Kolkata for 14 years. The first petition was rejected in 1994.
The convict's family members are not willing to give up. Even as the West Bengal government set in motion the formalities to execute the rapist-killer after receiving a formal communication from the Union Home Ministry, his brother is said to have sought a copy of the letter issued by the President rejecting clemency in order to take the next legal course under Article 32 of the Constitution. (Article 32 confers the right to move the Supreme Court for enforcement of fundamental rights.) Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who worked as a lift operator in the building where Hetal Parekh and her family lived, raped and killed the girl when she returned to an empty flat from school. The Alipore Sessions Court awarded Dhananjoy Chatterjee life imprisonment for rape and a death sentence for murder. The sentence was upheld both by the High Court and the Supreme Court, and the Governor of West Bengal rejected the plea for mercy filed by the convict's relatives. In February 1994, Dhananjoy obtained an interim stay from the High Court. More than nine years later, in September 2003, his petition for commutation of his sentence owing to the delay in its execution was quashed by the High Court, and Dhananjoy Chatterjee appealed to the Supreme Court. In February the Supreme Court referred his mercy petition to the Governor for reconsideration. The Governor once again rejected the petition and Dhananjoy was scheduled to be hanged to death at 4-30 a.m. on June 25.
But Dhananjoy's life was once again prolonged when a communique from the Union Home Ministry asked the State government to postpone the hanging until President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam gave his opinion on a mercy petition filed by Dhananjoy Chatterjee's family and several social organisations. When the President's office sought the State government's views on the matter, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government made it clear that it fully supported the death sentence. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said: "The government and I are in favour of the death sentence in this particular case. The Centre has been informed of this. The message should go loud and clear to the perpetrators of such crime."
Following Governor Viren J. Shah's rejection of his clemency petition, Dhananjoy Chatterjee petitioned the Supreme Court, which refused to entertain the petition as the matter was being examined by the President under Article 72 of the Constitution. Dhananjoy's case further weakened when on July 2 the Home Ministry recommended his execution to the President.
With the hangman's noose now looming large over Dhananjoy, the debate that is raging is not whether he deserves to be hanged but whether capital punishment is necessary in today's' society.
Those who knew Hetal feel that Dhananjoy deserves nothing less than the death penalty. Gillian Rosemary D'Costa Hart, principal of Welland Gouldsmith School, where Hetal studied, said, "Hetal was one of our brightest students. A lovely girl who met a very ghastly end. If Dhananjoy is hanged the pain won't disappear, but there would be some kind of justice." On the other hand, Dhananjoy's relatives and friends from his village in Bankura district have continuously appealed to the Governor and the courts for clemency. His family members, including his wife and his aged, ailing parents, sat in dharna in front of the Press Club in Kolkata, and threatened to commit suicide if Dhananjoy was hanged.
Kolkata is deeply divided over the issue. While numerous human rights organisations and non-governmental organisations have been protesting against the death sentence and have been petitioning the Governor and the President for commutation of the sentence, there is an equal number of outraged citizens who feel that the rapist-killer deserves to be hanged.
Film director Mrinal Sen told Frontline: "I have always been against capital punishment. The death penalty is a cruel and brutal practice. I am not saying this in defence of Dhananjoy Chatterjee. I have nothing but contempt for that man. But I am against any kind of brutality. Let him be punished for the rest of his life for what he has done. I feel extremely sad for parents, relatives and friends of the girl he killed. But brutality is not an answer to brutality."
Writer and social activist Mahasweta Devi said: "You cannot bring down the crime rate by awarding capital punishment." She feels that Dhananjoy should be given an opportunity to reform himself. But Meera Bhattacharjee, the Chief Minister's wife, feels that no mercy should be shown to Dhananjoy. Speaking at a debate on the issue, she made an emotional plea: "I have come here as a woman and the mother of a daughter. I know what the parents of Hetal Parekh have been going through for the past 14 years." Teary-eyed, she recounted with graphic details how the girl was mercilessly battered and raped and finally strangled with the rope of a swing that broke her voice box. "Can you still have thoughts of forgiving him?" she asked the gathering.
Although CPI(M) State secretary Anil Biswas is personally against the death sentence, he said, "At the same time we should not lose sight of the enormity and the gravity of Dhananjoy's crime."
Life imprisonment is all Dhananjoy wanted. He reportedly told the sentry guarding him the night before he was supposed to be hanged on June 25, "Look, my palm has no line of death, just a line of punishment."
According to various psychiatrists in Kolkata, Dhananjoy's behaviour and unruffled countenance as seen during the recent trial is that of an inveterate psychopath.
Consultant neuropsychiatrist Dr. Shiladitya Ray of Belle Vue clinic and Ruby General Hospital said: "I would expect any normal person to be a wreck by now. But his appearance and body language show that he is unrepentant and just doesn't care. For normal people such a situation brings about severe depression, absolute insomnia and food refusal, and psychomotor retardation. He has hardly shown any of these symptoms." According to him, for a "characterologic reformation" a stable baseline is a precondition. "History and precedence has shown that such people cannot be reformed," he said.
The fact that Dhananjoy's case had been scrutinised at all levels of the judiciary and went through the procedure for pardon only shows that it is in fact one of the rarest of rare cases in which capital punishment has been awarded.
A man convicted of raping and killing a schoolgirl 14 years ago has been executed in India.
Dhananjoy Chatterjee, 39, was hanged at dawn at the Alipore Central Jail in Calcutta where he had spent the last 13 years in solitary confinement.
Chatterjee was convicted for the 1990 rape and murder of 16-year-old Hetal Parekh, who lived in the building where he worked as a security guard.
“Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged at 0430 am,” Inspector General of Prisons Joydeb Chakraborty told reporters. Chatterjee’s family did not collect his body for cremation
Dhananjoy Chatterjee, the rapist and killer of 14-year-old schoolgirl Hetal Parekh, was hanged to death today at Alipore Central Jail sharp at 4-30 in the morning, ending a prolonged chapter of legal battle over his crime and punishment, his life and death. It also ended the continuing hopes, anxieties and agonies of Dhananjoy’s parents, wife and other relatives at their remote Kuldihi village home in Bankura, about 200 km from here.
Dhananjoy was subsequently cremated at the Keoratala burning ghat in Kalighat, south Kolkata under heavy police escort. None of his family members was present either at the Alipore jail or the Keoratala burning ghat.

Dhananjoy’s last wishes of donating his eyes and kidneys for the cause of humanity, however, could not be fulfilled as “no objection” to this act, had not been obtained at the last moment from his family, the IG (Prison), Mr Jaidev Chakraborty regretted. He said Dhananjoy was perfectly in good spirits and there was no resistance from his side when he had been brought to the gallows and put on the deck for hanging. He kept silent all through as if he had been reconciled with the situation. However, at the penultimate moment, he became a bit philosophical and was heard saying, “Oh God, let there be good to all,’’ the IG said describing Dhananjoy’s last moments.
Dhananjoy had a sound sleep last night after he had been administered a heavy dose of sleeping injection. He had his supper with roti, fish curry and vegetables. At noon during lunch he had been served with rice, fish, fried vegetables and dahi as desired by him. Throughout the day till late evening, Dhananjoy listened to Anup Jalota’s bhajans and Manna Dey’s songs on a tape-recorder which the jail authorities had arranged for him as he wished. But most of the time, he maintained a deep silence. He wanted to write something to his parents and wife on the postcards supplied to him, but he could not complete his writing. The hangman, Nata Mallick, declared soon after the hanging that it was his last act as hangman. Eightyfour-year-old Mallick, who had so far acted as hangman in 25 cases since Independence, will now start a new livelihood by selling puja items on the streets near a Kali temple.
Dhananjoy did not resist at the time of being hanged, but some human rights organisations, including the APDR, brought out a protest march from South Kolkata to Alipore Central Jail last night, demanding the suspension of his death penalty. On the other hand, teachers and students of Well & Goldsmith School, of which Hetal was a student, today held a prayer meeting inside the school campus in the memory of Hetal as well as Dhananjoy. At the remote village home in Bankura, Dhananjoy’s parents and other family members spent silent hours, refusing to meet and talk to outsiders.

Compiled 
AB

Sunday, February 26, 2017









House pigeons in the neighbourhood.

Friday, July 15, 2016








Spurt of colours: Marigold and Calendula flowers bloomed in my hanging garden that winter.
A house mynah sits comfortably on top of a pipe.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Man indicted for commenting on Thai King's pet

King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand and the dog he rescued from an alley, Tongdaeng,
at a boat race in 2008.

A factory worker in Thailand has been reportedly punished for being disrespectful towards their King Bhumibol Adulyadej's pet dog. He might have to be in the jail for thirty seven years for posting sarcastic comments about the innocent animal on the internet.

The military court of Thailand has seriously dealt with the case by asking the worker Thanakorn Siripaiboon to explain why he had made such remarks. Failing to give any answer to the military court, the Thai worker will now have to spend long time behind the bars.

Thailand's strict laws that make it a crime to insult the monarchy entered new territory after the verdict was given a few weeks ago to indict the uncourteous man. Thanakorn could face a total of 37 years in prison for his social media posts, highlighting what has become a feverish campaign to protect the monarchy and rebuff critics of the country's military rulers.